17th Century Skeptic: Is He Atheist or Christian?
Alec Ryrie
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6 March 2026
22 March 2026
A lecture by Alec Ryrie, Gresham Professor of Divinity 14 March 2019
https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/puritan-atheist
Early ‘atheism’ did not always mean angry rejection of religion. The most earnest believers were often ones who wrestled most seriously with doubts.
This lecture will look at how and why Christians in the seventeenth century first began seriously to wrestle with unbelief, whether troubled by feelings that God was absent, worries about religious variety or fear of damnation. What made these doubts so powerful was that their roots were not philosophical, but emotional.
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